AN Outrageous Affair

by Penny Vincenzi

  By the end of the first month, Poppy and the rest of the department were immensely impressed by her. Fleur was a worker. She didn’t mind how late she worked, or how menial the job she was asked to do. As well as typing with formidable speed and accuracy, filing with awe-inspiring discipline, turning a stash of tatty, half-destroyed bills for sandwiches and Cokes and cigarettes into neat petty cash accounts, and getting everybody off to meetings with all the right notes, roughs and copylines, she would do other things too that were no way in her job description. She would come in at six a.m. if she was asked, or even if she wasn’t, to tidy up the studio or to sort out sheets of contacts and boxes of transparencies, she would stand in patiently for models on photographic sessions for hours, while perfectionist art directors fiddled with reflector boards and fill-in flash and wide-angle lenses; she would book and cancel and rebook studios and locations; she would organize sandwiches and coffee and wine and cigarettes for meetings, and always remember that Poppy only liked rye bread and Will Wingstein, the copy chief, only drank Sanka and that Mick diMaggio didn’t like ice with his bourbon; she had even been known to wash the studio windows one morning when there had been no time to get the contractors organized, and Nigel Silk had said the chairman of RST was coming in and could they get the goddamned things clean, he had never seen anything quite so filthy outside the Bronx.

  Everybody liked her and all the men – or at least all the men who were not homosexual – fancied her; she was so pretty and coolly sexy, with her dark blue eyes and her nearly black hair, carved into the neat, geometric bob that the English hairdresser Vidal Sassoon had made famous, her long long legs, ever more gloriously visible as skirts rose and rose, her narrow, slender body with its oddly voluptuous breasts. She was funny too, and in spite of being a touch spiky, she was very good-natured, she didn’t mind being teased, or even shouted at, and if she did feel cross when the older and more lecherous members of the staff patted her neat, firm little buttocks in the corridors or the lifts, she never showed it, merely smiled patiently and tolerantly at them and hurried on her way. And yet she had no particular friend at the agency; she was not to be seen gossiping with the other girls in the sandwich bar at lunch-time or in the evening, she did not go out with them on hen nights, and never accepted invitations from the men in the agency either. She remained just slightly alone, slightly aloof; never involved in quarrels, feuds, petty politics. She simply went to the agency every day and worked, and got to know how everyone else worked; from the very beginning it seemed very clear to her that if you were going to succeed in life you succeeded on your own terms, in your own style, you capitalized on your own strengths, you learnt to camouflage your own weaknesses and you didn’t get caught up in anyone else’s. And Fleur was going to succeed: and when she was successful, she had a very clear agenda.

  At the top of it, way above her own apartment, a walk-in closet full of clothes and a series of love affairs with men over whom she had total control, was the clearing of her father’s name, and revenge on whoever it was who had sullied it – and caused his death. That was still, through all her new happiness, her growing confidence, her increasing awareness of her considerable personal assets, the force that drove her. It was one of her first thoughts every morning and one of her last every night. She seemed to be no nearer achieving it: she had visited the addresses given her by Naomi MacNeice for Clint and Berelman and found them long gone; she had trawled the phone directories, Variety, the theatre listings, all in vain. Clint and Berelman, it seemed, might have never existed, so efficiently, so thoroughly had they disappeared. She had even considered putting a notice in the Missing Persons columns, but had drawn back from that one on the advice of Poppy (in whom she had confided some fragments of her story) who said she would get a thousand letters from nuts, all hoping for some money, and none from the guys she was looking for. She had written to Yolande, in the hope that maybe they were still in Hollywood, and Yolande had written back to say they were not, but that she would keep an eye out for them; and so for the time being she was forced to abandon her quest. But not for long: she was not going to allow them to elude her for ever. She couldn’t.

  When she had been at Silk diMaggio for six months, she was working late one night, filing a mass of contact sheets and negatives that had been left on her desk several hours earlier, when the door opened and Nigel Silk walked in.

  Fleur was a little in awe of Nigel; Mick was a known entity, he often patted her head as he went past, winked at her as she took his coffee or his Coca-Cola into meetings, asked her how she was. But Nigel was, she felt, truly the boss: remote, authoritative, powerful. She had also never known anyone like him in her life; embryonic diMaggios – clever, emotional, volatile – she had gone to school with, lived next door to, all her life, but tall cool blond men in suits from J. Press and pink button-down shirts from Brooks Bros and Gucci shoes and briefcases, they were creatures from another country altogether, an alien race, one whose language and customs and lifestyles were almost unintelligible to her.

  Almost, but not quite.

  ‘It’s Miss FitzPatrick, isn’t it?’ he said, smiling his slightly remote, cool smile.

  ‘Yes. Fleur FitzPatrick.’

  ‘What a pretty name. It sounds as if you made it up.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘No, I’m sure you didn’t. It’s very late, Fleur FitzPatrick. Very late indeed.’

  ‘I know, Mr Silk. I just wanted to get this done.’

  ‘Can’t you do it in the morning?’

  ‘I’ve got a session in the morning. And lunch for twenty-two to get in by midday.’

  ‘Really? What a hard-working girl you are! I hope you enjoy yourself enough to justify all this endeavour.’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ said Fleur, sitting back in her chair and smiling up at him. ‘I just absolutely love it here.’

  There was such pleasure, such pure, undisguised honeyed conviction in her voice that Nigel was startled. ‘Do you? Good. That’s how you need to feel about it, you know, that’s how we all make the business work.’

  ‘I know it,’ said Fleur, smiling up at him.

  ‘Well, Miss FitzPatrick, I’m going home now. I don’t like to think of you alone in the building. Can I give you a lift anywhere? Where do you live?’

  ‘Brooklyn.’

  ‘Ah. Well, what about the nearest subway?’

  ‘No, really,’ said Fleur, ‘I’d rather finish this. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘And I’d rather you didn’t. Come on. Look . . .’ He hesitated. ‘I live quite near here. In Sutton Place. My driver is terribly under-employed. And I’m not going out tonight. My wife has invited eight extremely boring people to dinner. If you don’t mind making a detour, I’ll have him drop you home.’

  Fleur looked at him, at his grey eyes, his perfectly cut fair hair, his beautiful clothes, his tall slight frame, and thought she had never before this moment known quite what a gentleman was. She decided she liked the breed. He wasn’t gorgeous like – well, like Joe was gorgeous – but he was very attractive.

  ‘I don’t mind doing a detour at all,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much.’

  Later that night Mr Perkins told Mrs Perkins that Mr Silk seemed to have his eye on a new young lady, and Mrs Perkins should just remember what he’d said and he’d watch the situation very closely, it was going to be interesting, and if he knew anything at all, it was that the young lady in question would be more than a match for Mr Silk any day of the week.

  Within a month she had gone to bed with Nigel Silk. Looking back afterwards, wondering why she had broken all her rules for him, she could see it was because he was going to help her towards one of the ultimate goals she had set herself. Not a brilliant career, she could see to that for herself, on the back of her own talent and drive and guts, but towards a glamorous, glitzy lifestyle. Nigel Silk was a crash course in glamour.

&n
bsp; ‘He’s married of course,’ said Fleur to Margie Anderson, because she was the only person she could tell, ‘to someone absolutely gorgeous. She’s friends with Jackie Kennedy. I was reading about her in Vogue the other day. She’s terribly terribly rich, much richer than him, and they have an apartment in Sutton Place and a house at Bar Harbor, and a yacht, and she’s on the best-dressed list, well, the Woman’s Wear Daily one anyway. She’s blonde and very tall.’

  ‘Well, why should he be interested in you?’ said Margie, who was slightly sceptical about Fleur’s new conquest.

  ‘Because she bought him, and he’s bored with her.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Agency gossip.’

  ‘You shouldn’t believe gossip.’

  ‘I always believe gossip,’ said Fleur. ‘It’s usually at least partly true.’

  It was partly true; Serena Silk treated Nigel rather like some well-trained dog. She had set him up in business, she owned both their homes, she ran their lives and in particular their social lives, and the whole arrangement suited him as well as it suited her. The one bit of real estate that Nigel owned was a studio apartment in a warehouse downtown, near the financial district; it was a place, he explained to Fleur over their second (or was it their third?) after-work drink together, where he could work in complete peace, when he needed to get away from the hubbub of the agency, the phones, the incessant interruptions. Fleur had nodded politely, and accepted his offer to show it to her; it had housed, apart from a desk and a light-box, and a few other office accessories, a very large bed.

  Fleur had not had a great deal of sex; she had been to bed with a couple of boys at high school, and with a young waiter at a diner at Sheepshead Bay, and she had had an affair with a teacher (which had resulted in the pregnancy, and the abortion which Caroline had paid for: she sometimes felt bad about that these days, but then told herself that it was the very least her mother could do for her, having abandoned her and neglected her all her life). But she had had enough sex to know that Nigel Silk was absolutely no good at it. On the other hand, everything else to do with the affair was fun: after the sex, for instance, they always showered together and standing there in the steaming, fragrant water (lathering one another with Chanel No 5 soap) was much better and more exciting than the sex because it was glamorous and fun, and the sort of thing that happened in the movies. He had given her a huge white bathrobe and they would sit for hours, talking and drinking champagne and watching the skies and sometimes having a picnic which he brought with him, lobster or salmon and wonderful exotic salads and peaches or raspberries, and gorgeous soft, runny cheeses, Brie and Roquefort; that was all fun. Sometimes she stayed the night there in the studio (telling her Aunt Kate that she was staying with Margie) and in the morning they would have breakfast, coffee and croissants and orange juice, watching the sunrise on the waterfront.

  He called the shots, named the days; he never took her anywhere, the studio was their territory and that was that. Serena had no idea it was there, he said, but if she did it wouldn’t matter, she wouldn’t care.

  He would spend week nights in the studio with Fleur, but never weekends; he brought her presents which she had to keep in the studio and never wear to the office. It was frustrating, but it was nice to know they were there, and fun to use them when she was there; she now had a Gucci watch, and a Gucci ring, a Tiffany key chain, a big leather Gladstone from Mark Cross, several shirts and cashmeres from Brooks Brothers, a sweater from the Bermuda Shop, and a great deal of very expensive lingerie from Saks and Bonwits. She was learning and she was learning fast. Nigel had also given her the money to get her hair really well cut at Kenneth, and although she was not allowed to wear the clothes he bought her, she had a vast stock of Chanel No 5 perfume, so she smelt expensive all the time, which made her feel good about herself, and he did let her buy some expensive shoes from time to time, because she managed to persuade him that no one would notice. He also paid for her to have driving lessons, and even took her on a long weekend to Miami, which was a disappointment because instead of going to Palm Beach which she would have loved, they stayed at Miami Beach, which she hated, despite having the largest suite in the Alexander Hotel. She supposed he was frightened of meeting people he knew at Palm Beach.

  The whole arrangement suited Fleur very well; she was not remotely in love with Nigel, she had no other claims on her leisure time, and she felt she was gaining a great deal from the relationship. She was, she told herself, getting a college course in glamour, and she was going to graduate summa cum laude. And all she had to do by way of payment was listen to and sympathize with Nigel, and tell him he was wonderful in bed.

  Nigel had told her one lie: that Serena would not care if she found out. Fleur was sitting in the studio late one evening, wondering what had kept Nigel, when the door opened and Serena walked in. She was very polite, almost charming, told Fleur that it was time for her to leave, that enough was enough, that she had told Nigel the same thing, and asked her for the key to the apartment and her charge cards. Discomfited for the first time, Fleur said she had no charge cards, but handed over the key.

  ‘I hope,’ said Serena, smiling at her sweetly, ‘you don’t imagine he was in love with you.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Fleur, smiling equally sweetly back, ‘anyone can see Nigel is only in love with himself.’

  After Serena had gone, she took the leather Gladstone and packed it carefully, with all the lingerie and shirts and sweaters and Bermudas and polos; the jewellery, and the bags. As a final stroke of inspiration, she took the bathrobe.

  She didn’t quite know whether to laugh or be angry; she certainly wasn’t upset. Only her pride was hurt, and that didn’t really matter, nobody had ever known about it. Except for Margie of course, and she would just admire the way Fleur had handled it all. She wouldn’t look down on her, just because it was over. And she had learnt a lot about glamour and gained a lot of nice clothes. But it would still be nice to upset Nigel, to worry him, to leave him with a legacy of pain. Stupid bastard.

  Inspiration suddenly came to Fleur. She sat down at the big desk and wrote a note to Nigel at the agency, marked it personal, and mailed it on the way out.

  Miss Delmont handed it to him, lips pursed, the following morning, and watched him carefully as he read it, while appearing to be busy at her filing. She observed that he was quite white, and clearly shaken; he tore it into tiny pieces and then sat looking out of the window in silence for a long time. Finally he got up and poured himself a neat bourbon.

  ‘So what did it say, this note?’ asked Margie, looking at her friend in awe over an espresso the following evening.

  ‘Oh,’ said Fleur coolly, with a funny little smile, ‘I told him I hadn’t been taking the pill since Christmas and that my period was late. I said I’d let him know as soon as I was certain, but that of course as a good Catholic girl, I wouldn’t be able to consider having an abortion.’

  ‘Oh, Fleur,’ said Margie. ‘You are clever.’

  ‘I know,’ said Fleur.

  Background to early Hollywood chapters, The Tinsel Underneath. Interview with Estelle Mapleton, maid to Naomi MacNeice.

  I liked Mr Patrick very much. He was always so kind to me. He was a genuine person. You don’t meet too many genuine people in this town. He once lent me a hundred dollars. He said, ‘I know you may not be able to give it back for a long time, Mappy – that was what Miss MacNeice called me, Mappy, I hated it – but don’t worry about it.’

  But he was a silly boy. No match for the system really. He trusted people, that was his problem. He even trusted Miss MacNeice. There was always someone, someone he had around his neck, someone he was trying to help. He used to say, ‘I’ve been lucky, Mappy, I feel I should pass some of it on.’

  I never heard him talking about anyone called Zwirn, but that doesn’t mean a thing. I do remember something about Kirst
ie Fairfax though. It was very sad that. She was a lovely girl, Byron had met her somewhere, tried to persuade Miss MacNeice to give her a tiny part in a movie. They had a row about it. She was very jealous. He had only to look at a girl, and she went ape-shit. And then there we were being told he’d been looking at boys.

  It was very bad, the scandal. I was ashamed of Miss MacNeice. I never saw anyone kicked out faster. He had no chance to explain, to disprove anything. One day he was in his apartment, with his car and his fancy clothes; the next he was out on the street in the things he stood up in. I said to her, Miss MacNeice, ‘What will become of Mr Patrick?’ and she said she never wanted to hear his name again, that as far as she was concerned, he didn’t exist. He phoned a couple of times; I tried to get her to speak to him, but she wouldn’t. One awful day he turned up outside the house on San Ysedro. He stood outside the gate all day ringing on the bell; I kept going down, saying go home, Mr Patrick, just go along home, you know she won’t see you. ‘I don’t have a home, Mappy,’ he said, ‘unless you count the beach.’ That was just before the accident. When she got home she just drove past him and in. Parsons said she could have killed him, the wheels were so close. I think, you see, she was really fond of him. I think she was very hurt.